(NAME-MCE) Come Out Against Racism!

[Aukram Burton]

We clearly need broad mass responses, but it is also clear that we  
have to do a lot of mass educational work around increasing mass  
consciousness regarding race and class. What is good about what  
happened is that we were able to get a snap shot of how the american  
public sees race and class. We can also see how the right has  
mobilized to seize the time and build off of the populations  
reactionary and backward understanding of race and class. The right  
realized that this is still a live and hot wire and they are  
exploiting it for all they can get in order to build public opinion  
that can have negative impact on the positive reforms that the Obama  
administration is trying to bring forth.

Pass this on!


From: Bail Out the People Movement - Boston <bopmboston at gmail.com>
Subject: 7/29: Come Out Against Racism - Stop Racial Profiling
To: iacboston at organizerweb.com
Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 2:04 PM

Come Out Against Racism!



Stop Racial Profiling and Police Brutality!

Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Was Right!

The Cambridge Cops Must Apologize!

Youth Need Jobs & Schools - Not Jails!

Demand a Justice Department Investigation of Racial Profiling Across  
the US


Wednesday, July 29
5:00 pm - Gather
5:30 pm - Press Conference

6-8:00 pm - Police Review and Advisory Board Special Meeting

Cambridge City Hall, Sullivan Chamber
795 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
(one block from Central Square Red Line T)


The arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by a Cambridge police  
officer after showing two forms of identification after he, along with  
a Black limo driver, had unjammed the lock to the front door of Gates'  
own house in a predominantly white, upscale neighborhood known as  
"Harvard Square" has brought the struggle against racism to the front  
pages of newspapers throughout the US and around the world.

The Cambridge Police Department and their racist allies have worked  
overtime to slander and vilify Prof. Gates. But his only crime was in  
fact to resist the racist arrogance of the Cambridge Police and not  
acquiesce to their racist and unjust treatment of him. The torrent of  
racist vitriol targeting Prof. Gates as well as the absolute racist  
arrogance displayed by the Cambridge Police Department in demanding  
that Pres. Obama and Gov. Patrick apologize for expressing support for  
Prof. Gates, cannot go unanswered!  It is time for all poor and  
working people, and particularly whites, to come out against these  
racist attacks and stand foursquare in 100% solidarity with Professor  
Gates and against racial profiling and police brutality.

Cambridge, Harvard University and Boston are seen around the world as  
bastions of liberalism, hotbeds of progressive ideas and prestigious  
places from which cutting-edge research emanates. But the racial  
profiling and arrest of Prof. Gates have re-raised the question of how  
much has changed since the 1970s when, in the wake of court-ordered  
busing for desegregation, white racist mobs were stoning buses  
carrying Black school children and attacking Black people on the  
streets and in their homes.

Gates was Right! The Cambridge Police Department was Wrong!

Racial profiling is another expression of institutionalized racism. In  
the U.S., racial profiling and police brutality have become an  
unfortunate reality of life for people of color, especially youth. It  
doesn't matter whether it occurs in the inner city, a small town, or  
an upper-middle class suburb.

In a 2004 report entitled "Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling,  
Domestic Security and Human Rights in the United States," Amnesty  
International documented that in a year-long investigation, an  
estimated 32 million people had been racially profiled--the vast  
majority of them from nationally oppressed groups. One can only  
imagine how much these numbers have increased over the last five  
years, not only for those born in the U.S. but also for immigrants.   
Since 9/11 there has been a corresponding increase in racial profiling  
targeting the Arab and Muslim communities.

The police have been, by far, the most feared perpetrators of racial  
profiling, and understandably so. Police harassment and brutality is  
an epidemic.  According to a 2008 report by the Washington, D.C. based  
Campaign for Youth Justice entitled ”Critical Condition: African  
American Youth in the Justice System” African American youth make up  
30 percent of youth arrested while they represent only 17 percent of  
the overall youth population. Additionally, African American youth are  
62 percent of the total number of youth prosecuted in the adult  
criminal system and are nine times more likely than white youth to  
receive an adult prison sentence.

One only needs to remember how the Somerville 5 (5 Black youth from  
Somerville who were arrested on racist frame up charges by the Medford  
Police)  or the Jena 6 were treated.  Not to mention the racism that  
followed the devastation of the 9th Ward in New Orleans as a result of  
hurricane Katrina.

As the economic crisis deepens the ruling class will use all means at  
its disposal to foster artificial divisions between white workers and  
Black, Latina/o, and immigrant workers.  It is our responsibility to  
build a movement based on anti-racist, class-wide solidarity--as  
workers of all nationalities are losing their jobs, homes, health care  
and pensions in rapid numbers; and as the economic crisis becomes even  
more acute.

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